I just want to put this out there, because I think that BEP used to be a very good hip hop group before Fergie joined, then they just turned to crap.

I wrote this review three years ago. I haven't read it in a while, so it might not be as good as I remember, but I'll give you the gist of it: yes, Fergie helped kill BEP. She officially made them a trite pop act, when they used to be decent indie leaning hip-hop (I highly recommend you youtube Alanis Morisette's cover of "My Humps" immediately). However, Will.I.Am's desire to be a Pharrell Williams sell-out also played its part in destroying their credibility as artists.
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Black Eyed Peas
http://www.blackeyedpeas.com/
styles: pop, hip-pop, pop-pop, wank
others: Our holy and irreverent Sir Bono, in his mind the Bill to our collective Ted

Monkey Business
A&M, 2005
rating: 0/5
reviewer: filmore mescalito holmes

You may not know this but there was a time when the West Coast collective known as the Black Eyed Peas made actual hip-hop music. Yes, way back in 1998, they released Behind The Front which featured a style nearly identical production wise to Jurassic 5, J5 having released their famous self-titled EP the year before. Pinching old-school samples and simple beats for under their now trademark vague, condescending lyrics, BEP had found a somewhat successful niche and rode the wave of rising underground hip-hop popularity to 197,000 in sales and peaked at 139 on the Billboard chart. They went for the gold again two years later pumping out a nearly identical LP called Bridging The Gap which brought in 258,000 in sales peaking at 67 but it wasn’t enough to satisfy their shared ambition. So they ditched the sample based underground production for vanilla synths over catalogued beats and brought in a dime a dozen female pop singer (just watch two episodes of your country’s Idol and know I’m right) for 2003’s Elephunk. Able to ignore the band’s head-scratching decision to release an apparently thoughtful, socially criticizing “Where’s The Love” whose video revealed it to be something more like a superficial pandering single and following it with the “Let’s Get Retarded” anthem for the glorification of stupidity and thoughtlessness, the Black Eyed plague spread like the runny turd it is and topped sales charts with over 1.4 million units. All of a sudden, they were Hollywood faces staring at four Grammy® nominations off the back of their first Bonorific single. In turn, the Grammy® settled into its role of capitalism’s biggest sell-out convention with all the grace of Mickey Mouse brutally penetrating a Chinese Disney sweatshop worker…like he does every day.

The Black Eyed Peas had quickly perfected the keys to pop success which include, among others, uninspired background music, overly sexual yet completely impersonal lyrics featuring simple high school poetic devices passed off as humour, talent, or intelligence (e.g. “you love my lady lumps” would be an example of alliteration…pure hilarity, sure, but it really makes you think too), videos devoid of any artistic intent instead exploding with audience tested choreography and quick cuts paced by a strobe light for those split-second attention span television addicts that make up their target market, a well rehearsed façade of caring about the world’s problems but under no circumstances turning that caring into mass action, and being seen in as many commercials as schedule dictates for any product with the cash up front including Dr. Pepper, to help their marketing department to capture the black demographic, the NBA, I guess to help them get the white market, and generally whoring out to Best Buy, eBay, and iPod. I call it “being seen” as opposed to “acting in” here because it’s beyond pretend at this point. The BEP who released the still dope “Joints & Jam” in the late 90’s is long gone, having transformed in a cloud of barcodes and price tags to the money driven, gaping-assed hacks they are today, because, you see, what they do now is what they are and they are salesmen. Advertising is like a daydream to them.

So, what to do after all the fanfare from touring and constant TV appearances dies down? Better get the next CD out before profit margins dwindle. They’ll look at a chart, some research and notes; however they decide to come to the creative process. And here it is in all its assuming glory. You know what you’ve got from the first note of the first track too. Why, they’ve taken surf-rock masterpiece “Misrilou” by Dick Dale, most recognized as the theme to pulp fiction, thrown a “Bombs Over Baghdad” beat under it and proclaimed it “niggas wanna hate on us” (“Pump It”) hip-hop when, in actuality, it’s “nobody with a shred of intuition could possibly believe a bullshit word you say as you reek miserably of moral perversion and a willingness to sell anything for the right price” hip-pop slash R&B because, by the definition I’m sure someone has written down by now, Justin Timberlake can never be heard on a real hip-hop track unless someone is making fun of him in the harshest way possible and the aptly named Monkey Business’ “My Style” marks his second appearance on a BEP album.

Musically, the opening eBay jingle is barely classifiable as an original work in contrast to the Dick Dale tune on which it’s based. However, this aural travesty does set you up nicely for the bastardized “Pass The Dutchie / Walk Like An Egyptian” medley thrown together on “Dum Diddley,” a useless, nonsensical piece of pop that further reinforces the notion indicated by the first track that, like other fan’s choice award winning pop acts, they cannot come up with anything truly original anymore so they rape history and all the vaults their Big 5 (soon to be Big 4) record label owns in search of their next big moneymaking single. Every sound on Monkey is just as unimaginative as the last and the lyrics are as good as you’d expect from such Real World types featuring around three references a track to how awesome Black Eyed Peas are and instructions on what men like to see in, how high to turn, or what can be done with “it” plus several mentions of “the house,” “freaking,” and “thangs” in each song as well as one particularly stirring ode to Fergie’s lumps in “My Humps” and, from the sounds of it, she has one spectacular camel toe…or breast cancer. Who knows what those rizzle razzle hip-hop beboppers are saying these days anyway? I know at one point on Behind’s “Fallin’ Up” the line “try to diss our function by stating that we can’t rap / Is it cause we don’t wear Tommy Hilfiger or baseball caps / We don’t use dollars to represent” can be clearly heard while they’re now all covered in I Am Clothing, will.i.am’s personal clothing line which reminds me of that “actions speak louder than words” saying. Also, I swear some dude mumbles “Black Eyed Peas represent sellin’ out” three times on the last verse of “Like That” and if he isn’t, he should be because no one with genuine human emotions could possibly take these groin-grabbing Outkast wannabes seriously. They are to hip-hop what No Doubt was to ska but, instead of waiting till success waned before scrambling frantically for the shiniest penny, they skipped that whole awkward dying artist phase and just went for it. Bravo, guys.